Pay Palestinians for razed homes and give them Gaza settlements.

Personal note: Title edited to fit on page line, mods may edit further if they see fit.

By Uri Dromi, Uri Dromi is the director of international outreach at the Israel Democracy Institute in Jerusalem.


Now that Israeli forces are withdrawing from Rafah after a weeklong operation to uproot Palestinian terrorists and crack down on weapons smuggling, there are talks in high-level military and legal circles in Israel about compensating Palestinians whose houses were demolished in the heat of battle.

This is a very good idea. Though a handful of inhabitants were willing hosts to terrorists, the majority were innocent people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time — when Hamas and Islamic Jihad were taking shelter in civilian neighborhoods. In fact, a senior army officer admitted Monday that of the 56 houses Israel says were demolished, only two of the owners had been implicated in terrorist activity. It is therefore only fair and just to compensate the others.

Less encouraging is the news coming from Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's office that, when and if Israel finally moves its settlers out of the Gaza Strip, the settlements themselves — the houses and other buildings that have gone up over the decades — will be demolished. This folly must be avoided at all costs.

It appears that, having finally reached the conclusion that keeping 7,500 Jews in the midst of 1.5 million Arabs was not such a good idea after all, Sharon's angry and childish reaction is: If I can't have it, they won't have it either.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-dromi26may26,1,5291465.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions

mean and stupid, but it is a good idea if Israel wanted to have friends.

"Unfortunately, when it comes to Sharon, there is nothing new in the sinister idea that when you withdraw, you leave to your enemy only a patch of scorched earth. In 1982, as defense minister, Sharon orchestrated the destruction of the Israeli settlements in Sinai before handing the area over to the Egyptians. Many in Israel wondered then why, instead of that brutal step, Israel couldn't just give the Egyptians those settlements as a token of friendship, a gesture of goodwill that would have smoothed the way to true peace between the two sides."

Destruction of those buildings by Israel would quite rightly be seen as an incredibly petty and vindictive move. Any decision on whether they get demolished or not should be up to the Palestinians after Israel has withdrawn. What to do with those buildings after any withdrawal is an interesting issue. In the interests of fairness, giving them to those Palestinians whose homes were destroyed by the IDF would be one solution, or selling the houses off and giving the proceeds to them. I'm a cynic though, and I kind of get this vision of the future where well-off bureaucrats (or Egyptian 'security') will be the only folk who end up living in them or getting any proceeds off them...

Violet...